For Everyone I Know Who's Growing Up These Days...

"Act III, Scene II"

.

Someone has altered the script.

My lines have been changed.

The other actors are shifting roles.

They don't come on when they're expected to,

and they don't say the lines I've written

and I'm being upstaged.

I thought I was writing this play

with a rather nice role for myself,

small, but juicy

and some excellent lines.

But nobody gives me my cues

and the scenery has been replaced

and I don't recognize the new sets.

This isn't the script I was writing.

I don't understand this play at all.

.

To grow up

is to find

the small part you are playing

in this extraordinary drama

written by

somebody else.

.

--Madeleine L'Engle, from The Ordering of Love.